The present invention relates to dishwashing equipment and more particularly to an improved dishwashing machine of the single chamber or door type.
One problem which commercial kitchens such as restaurants face in washing dishes is the handling of heavy refuse such as large food particles, paper napkins, etc., which may be left on dishes or may be in food preparation utensils. For many years the normal practice in commercial kitchens was to provide an area where an employee prerinsed all of the dishes by hand in order to wash off this large refuse. In the more recent past, rack conveyor type commercial dishwashers have included pre-wash sections which function to remove this large refuse prior to the wash operation. Such rack conveyor type dishwashers have a plurality of chambers and the trays of dishes are moved sequentially through the chambers. Normally to conserve water, the water proceeds through the machine in the reverse direction. That is, the water is first used to provide a final rinse, then is used to provide a first rinse of a next load of dishes; then it used to provide the washing action on another load of dishes and then is used as the pre-rinse water. Because of their multi-chamber mode of operation, rack conveyor dishwashers are capable of providing a pre-rinse so as to eliminate the need of the manual pre-wash operation.
Many smaller volume operations, such as small restaurants, do not have a sufficient volume of dishes to make it economical to use a large rack conveyor type dishwasher. Normally, they use a door type dishwasher in which a single chamber is utilized for washing and rinsing dishes, one rack at a time. With such machines it has been necessary to manually pre-wash the dishes to get rid of the larger, heavy refuse.